On 19th June 2022, after a second round of voting, the Colombian people elected their first ever left-wing government, led by Gustavo Petro, with Francia Márquez as vice-president, the first ever Afro-Colombian and only the second woman to hold the position. In this post, we will focus on this trailblazing woman, who studied Law specifically to be prepared to defend the rights of her people, and on the context that led her and her country to this new chapter in their history.

Francia Elena Márquez Mina was born in 1981 in Yolombó, in the Cauca Department on the West coast of Colombia, one of the areas of the country where enslaved populations from Africa have lived since the 17th century. Traditionally in this region, Black slaves were forced to work in gold mining, sugarcane plantations and cattle ranches. To this day, the impact of exploitatative and extractivist practices on peoples, territories and resources in the region are still painfully relevant and have been part of Francia Márquez’s life experience since her earliest formative years, which would lead her to become a committed activist from the age of 17 years old. This life experience remains the basis of her politics, as she makes the move from activism to mainstream politics.

The Library holds many publications on issues affecting Afro-Colombians and on the subsequent stream of local activist initiatives ; below are a list of selected titles in Spanish and some in English:

• Aspectos históricos, políticos, económicos, ambientales y culturales de la problemática de los pueblos indígenas y afrocolombianos del Pacífico (Bogotá, Colombia: Ediciones Turdakke, 2002). The title of this work is self-explanatory. This, together with Marginalidad y exclusión en el Pacífico colombiano: una visión histórica (Cali: Editorial Universidad Santiago de Cali, 1999) are the earliest works on the topic that the library holds.
• Dinámicas socioculturales y ambientales del Pacífico colombiano (Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca, 2020). A multidisciplinary approach to the study of the Afro-Colombian presence in the region, with a focus on local knowledge around sustainability and diversity.
• Territorio en movimiento(s): ausencias y emergencias en torno a la finca tradicional afrocaucana (Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2019). This book deals with the grassroots autonomous and emancipatory local organisations in Cauca that propose counter-hegemonic alternatives to the current economic practices harming the territory.
• Territorios, control y diferencia étnica: comunidades negras e indígenas frente al despojo en el norte del Cauca. (Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca, 2018). This publication deals with the history of the Indigenous and Black populations in the area, the local power structures, mining, community work and land ownership.
• Caña de azúcar en el espléndido Valle del Río Cauca, Colombia: historia ambiental, conflictos ambientales y acción colectiva. (Cali: Universidad del Valle, 2021). This book is about the political, social and environmental consequences of sugarcane production in the Cauca River Valley area, and the collective actions undertaken by local communities to counteract the impacts.
• Territorialidad y familia entre las sociedades negras del sur del Valle del Río Cauca and Las culturas negras: entre las sociedades negras afrocolombianas del norte del Cauca, Colombia. Both published in Cali (Programa Editorial Universidad del Valle, 2017) and both focusing on the social, demographic and economic history of the Black population in the area. Published by the same publisher but in 2007, Sociedad, cultura y resistencia negra en Colombia y Ecuador, deals with the same topics.
• Landscapes of freedom: building a postemancipation society in the rainforests of western Colombia (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2018). This title, by Claudia Leal, “reconstructs a nonplantation post-emancipation trajectory that sheds light on how environmental conditions and management influenced the experience of freedom; it also points at the problematic associations between autonomy and marginality that have shaped the history of Afro-America” (publisher’s description).
• The geographies of social movements: Afro-Colombian mobilization and the aquatic space (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). The book “examines how the work of local community councils, which have organized around newly granted ethnic and land rights since the early 1990s, is anchored to space and place. Exploring how residents’ social relationships are entangled with the region’s rivers, streams, swamps, rain, and tides, [the author] argues that this “aquatic space” provides a local epistemology that has shaped the political process”.
• Black and green Afro-Colombians, development, and nature in the Pacific lowlands (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).

Since 1997, Francia Márquez has been an active member of the Organización Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), a national conglomeration of around 140 local organisations, assemblies and community councils that work together for Afro-Colombian people’s rights. The PCN is the focus of the book Territorios de diferencia: lugar, movimientos, vida, redes, by Arturo Escobar and published by Editorial Universidad del Cauca (2018). The PCN also features in an article in La política en movimiento : identidades y experiencias de organización en América Latina (CLACSO, 2008).

She was also president of the Asociación de Mujeres Afrodescendientes de Yolombó (Yolombó’s Afrodescendant Women Association) for 3 years from 2010. The status and multiple struggles of Black women in Colombia feature in our collections too:

• Mujer, negra y desplazada: triple victimización en Colombia. Medellin: UNAULA, 2013. A dignified testimony to the voices of individuals who have been three times marginalised: black women, displaced because of multiple acts of violence.
• Voces de resistencias: el reconocimiento psicológico en tiempos de posconflicto en mujeres afro (Cali: Universidad Santiago de Cali, 2019). This publication approaches the diverse therapeutic strategies Black Colombian women have used to deal with the trauma created as consequence of the decades-long Colombian conflict between government, far-right paramilitary groups, crime syndicates, and far-left guerrilla groups.
• Hijas del Muntu: biografías críticas de mujeres afrodescendientes de América Latina.(Bogota: Panamericana Editorial, 2011) and El poder de lo invisible: memorias de solidaridad, humanidad y resistencia (Bogota: Ediciones B, 2018) are rich compendiums of biographies of many Black Latin American women who surely would have been an inspiration to Francia Márquez.
• Las muchachas se fueron : de migraciones y sentires : sobre poemas afrocolombianos que cuentan historias y construyen sujeto femenino (Cali: Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, 2017).
• Vivimos del mate : voces y testimonios de mujeres afropatianas (Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca, 2016).

It was with the Asociación de Mujeres Afrodescendientes de Yolombó that in 2014 Márquez participated in the organisation of a Black women’s march from Suárez in north Cauca to the capital city of Bogotá (547 km or 340 miles in 10 days), demanding an end to illegal mining in the Ovejas river region, fulfilling the Constitutional Court’s recognition of Afro-Colombians’ ancestral rights over these territories. The landmark march, named “Movilización de Mujeres Negras por el Cuidado de la Vida y los Territorios ancestrales” or, most commonly, “Marcha de los turbantes”, due to the marching women’s traditional headwear, led to Colombia’s first government taskforce on illegal mining, as well as full legal recognition, reparations and land restitution for 27 North Cauca communities.

Francia Márquez has been the recipient of several prizes for her work, including the Premio Nacional a los defensa de los Derechos humanos en Colombia, and the Goldman Environmental Prize, but her own words say more than these awards can convey:

“Soy parte de un proceso, de una historia de lucha y resistencia que empezó con mis ancestros traídos en condición de esclavitud. Soy parte de la lucha contra el racismo estructural, soy parte de que luchan por seguir pariendo la libertad y justicia. De quiénes conservan la esperanza por un mejor vivir, de aquellas mujeres que usan el amor maternal para cuidar su territorio como espacio de vida, de quién alzan la voz para parar la destrucción de los ríos, de los bosques, de los páramos”

“I am part of a process, a history of struggle and resistance that began with my ancestors brought here as slaves. I am part of the struggle against structural racism, I am part of the fight to continue to give birth to freedom and justice; of those who keep the hope alive for a better existence, of those women who use maternal love to look after their territories as a space for life, of those who raise their voices to stop the destruction of the rivers, the forests and the plains.”

Clara Panozzo